Alexis Fletcher switches it up with Vanessa Goodman and Ted Littlemore, creating a new sonic connection
At Dancing on the Edge, Tuning marks a new journey for the 14-year Ballet BC dancer
Vanessa Goodman
Ted Littlemore and Alexis Fletcher “tune” into each other in the rehearsal studio. Photo byVanessa Goodman
Dancing on the Edge presents Tuning at the Firehall Arts Centre on July 16 and 17 at 7 pm.
WHAT HAPPENS when three inspired artists from different realms of the Vancouver dance community get into a room together to work on a piece?
Until recently, that’s been largely off-limits during pandemic social-distancing. And the three artists behind the new Tuning are ready to make the most of their collaboration, exploring live, vocally generated sound as well as movement. The fact they are now able to perform it in front of a live audience only strengthens the feeling of making new connections.
“To get that email from Dancing on the Edge that were going to go live... I just felt my spirit lighten,” says choreographer Vanessa Goodman, adding the duet was conceived last year, at a time when the world was in lockdown and the artists were yearning for connection: “Definitely it was influenced by the fact we were missing that interconnectedness. We wanted to explore how we can be together and what that means. We’re social creatures!”
Set to be performed at the Firehall Arts Centre in this final week of the Dancing on the Edge festival, the work brings together contemporary-dance artist Goodman, recently seen in the critically acclaimed Graveyards and Gardens with Caroline Shaw; Alexis Fletcher, a 14-year dancer with Ballet BC who’s now artist in residence at the company and carving out an independent career; and Ted Littlemore, a celebrated contemporary dancer, musician, and drag performer.
Fletcher commissioned Action at a Distance’s Goodman for the duet partly as a way to link up with artists inside the community but outside the circle of the company that was her familiar terrain dating way back to the reign of artistic director John Alleyne. Fletcher starred in everything from Giselle to William Forsythe’s Herman Schmerman. Working with Goodman, an SFU School for the Contemporary Arts grad who’s known for conjuring immersive, multimedia worlds in pieces like Wells Hill and Blot, is a definite departure. But she and Goodman had always gone to each other’s shows, and Fletcher felt a kinship with her.
Photo by Vanessa Goodman
“What I’m loving about this is it’s really starting on this clean page,” she reflects in a conference call with Goodman. “Obviously I carry my movement history into the room, just like Vanessa does. But just the newness of the relationship and this new way to think about dance is creating this beautiful layer and texture….It’s sharing a very intimate space with people I don’t normally share space with.
“As Ted and I are working on these choreographic scores we’re also learning who each other is in the same moment,” she adds of Littlemore, whom she’s never danced with onstage.
Goodman became hooked on the potential of live-triggered vocals in Graveyards and Gardens, working with Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Shaw in an online presentation by Music on Main early this year. It was an instant hit, building a mesmerizing world of looping vocals, Goodman toting her microphone around a rec-room-like circle of retro speakers, vintage lamps, and old-school turntables and tape decks.
She’s now bringing vocorders into Tuning. Goodman says Fletcher and Littlemore are live-creating the whole score, using the voice-altering synthesizer to play with pitch and harmonize their voices in a sonic and physical conversation.
“We’re exploring how we talk with the body with and without sound, and how breath is important,” Goodman hints. “The really exciting aspect of the work is that everything is generated in the moment and there’s that ephemeral, fleeting aspect to it….After they create the sound for each show it’s gone forever. The sensation the audience is left with and how we hold onto it in our bodies is the only archive.”
For Fletcher, the live score brings just the kind of new challenge she’s craving as she begins a new chapter in her career.
“I actually use text in my own choreography and a lot of choreographers [at Ballet BC] over the years have used text to generate movement. But I haven’t really sung onstage since I was young and did musical theatre,” the Comox Valley-raised, Arts Umbrella-trained artist says with a laugh. “I was so nervous at first. Using voice opens a whole other level of vulnerability!
“But the vocorder is so fun and engaging to work with. One of my biggest challenges in the piece, technically, is learning this totally new machine and learning what lands in a space and why.”
Fletcher, Littlemore, and Goodman aren’t done with their explorations together. The show at the Firehall will evolve into a full length production in February 2022, and—barring any more lockdowns and social distancing measures—the bonds will only deepen between them.
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